Yeo: China-India bridge role suits Asean best

August 20, 2012

Bangkok Post

The 10 members of Asean should stick together to tap the continued growth of China and India, put behind them the recent failure of diplomacy in Cambodia, and instead seek to be a bridge between Asia’s two economic giants, says Singapore’s former foreign minister.

Yeo: “We are in between two tectonic plates.”

George Yeo, currently vice-chairman of Kerry Group, said that a spirit of cooperation “would bring about benefits” for all sides.

China and India, he said, together account for about 40% of the world’s population and about 60% of the world’s brainpower.

“We are in between the two and we have the mix of both,” he said in reference to Asean’s cultural and ethnic heritages. A large part of the region’s culture is derived from India while ethnicity among a large part of the region’s population is of Chinese origin.

“We are in between two tectonic plates, so we need to better balance the external pressures.”

In order to do this, he said, current tensions in the South China Sea cannot be allowed to “get in the way”.
Asean leaders meeting in Cambodia in July failed for the first time in the group’s history to issue a joint statement, as members could not agree on how hard a line to take with China over claims to disputed islands in the South China Sea. Cambodia as the summit chair was widely blamed for discouraging attempts to criticise its giant patron.

Mr Yeo said the events in Phnom Penh were an indicator of divisions that were emerging in Asean, but said any kind of break-up of the grouping was not in the best interest of any powers in the region.

Today, he said, Asean is negotiating with regional powers on an equal footing and it is not necessary for anybody to try to bully the group into heeding one set of demands.

Doing so would “invite others to the area and this is not in the best interest of China”, he said in an address in Bangkok to the Asean Business Club, a grouping of about 70 businesses whose Thai members include Bangkok Bank, Central Group and Indorama Ventures.

“China knows that Asean was promiscuous,” he said in a reference to the region’s non-alignment to any global power while remaining friendly to all parties.

“Therefore it is not in China’s interest to wreck Asean, for if Asean is divided then the United States and India will walk in.”

To the corporate world, he urged the companies in the region to expand outside their home bases or risk losing out in a major way once the markets open up further.

He added that countries such as China are looking to create greater links to the region as it is the gateway to the west, especially to Bangkok and then to Dawei in Myanmar.